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ESPN reportedly working on '30 for 30' about the XFL

mvcg66b3r

mvcg66b3r

Despite the fact that it lasted only one season, the XFL is impossible for sports fans to forget. The league, which was supposed to be an offseason complement to the NFL, was started by WWE founder Vince McMahon in 2001. Guess when it ceased operations? Yep, 2001.

The XFL lasted just one season, but enough went into it that ESPN is reportedly working on a “30 for 30” documentary about the football league. Jonathan Coachman, a SportsCenter anchor and ESPN radio host who spent nine years as a commentator in the WWE, revealed the news on “The Ross Report” with Jim Ross this week, via Black Sports Online.

Coachman says he recently sat down for an “in-depth interview” to discuss the XFL for the “30 for 30” special.
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http://larrybrownsports.com/everything-else/espn-30-for-30-xfl/304426
 
Besides "He Hate Me" (Rod Smart), the thing I'll always remember about that league was the two-guys-running-at-each-other-full-speed-trying-to-cover-a-football gimmick instead of the coin flip. The first game it was tried, someone separated a shoulder.

The league failed because the football wasn't very good. You can't present a product that looks like the NFL without NFL-caliber players.
 
"The league failed because the football wasn't very good. You can't present a product that looks like the NFL without NFL-caliber players."

There were a few...Smart, Tommy Maddox...OK, 2. As far as the games themselves, there was no real effort to do what was really the bedrock of WWF (and WCW at the time), and that was to create storylines. We never saw players or coaches bolt their teams to join other teams, players from rival teams forming alliances, or anything else that made pro wrestling "soap operas for guys".
 
Corky Marlowe said:
"The league failed because the football wasn't very good. You can't present a product that looks like the NFL without NFL-caliber players."

There were a few...Smart, Tommy Maddox...OK, 2. As far as the games themselves, there was no real effort to do what was really the bedrock of WWF (and WCW at the time), and that was to create storylines. We never saw players or coaches bolt their teams to join other teams, players from rival teams forming alliances, or anything else that made pro wrestling "soap operas for guys".
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and many still expected scripted games like the wrestling matches
 
...Junior McMahon originally tried to buy the Canadian Football League. The CFL told him to go sit on a goalpost...
 
One thing the XFL helped popularize and is still in existence: the sky cam.

On a side note, I remember in 1994 when Fox won the NFL NFC package and showed the game time and score continually on screen. It was called the Fox Box. Reporters thought it wouldn't last because it told the viewers immediately if this was a boring contest. Now it's an industry standard.
 
brian4 said:
One thing the XFL helped popularize and is still in existence: the sky cam.

On a side note, I remember in 1994 when Fox won the NFL NFC package and showed the game time and score continually on screen. It was called the Fox Box. Reporters thought it wouldn't last because it told the viewers immediately if this was a boring contest. Now it's an industry standard.
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I love the Fox Box nearly as much as I hate the ever-present scores/headlines scroll on the bottom of the screen. I believe ESPN2 was the first network to try that.
 
CTListener said:
I love the Fox Box nearly as much as I hate the ever-present scores/headlines scroll on the bottom of the screen. I believe ESPN2 was the first network to try that.
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It's actually kind of weird to see a sports telecast from before the mid 90s without the score bug, or other stuff like the first down line. I kind of have a love-hate relationship with the scores and headlines crawl, because I always manage to glance at it just after I miss the score I was looking for, or just in time to see the end of a headline like "for violations of NCAA rules", or "dies of a heart attack at age 71".
 
CTListener said:
Besides "He Hate Me" (Rod Smart), the thing I'll always remember about that league was the two-guys-running-at-each-other-full-speed-trying-to-cover-a-football gimmick instead of the coin flip. The first game it was tried, someone separated a shoulder.

The league failed because the football wasn't very good. You can't present a product that looks like the NFL without NFL-caliber players.
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Got that right. I watched a fair bit of the XFL and the quality of the football was crappy.
This as compared to the USFL, which actually had a high quality of play, and put a lot of players into the NFL
when it folded.

Best quote on HeHateMe was by Dan Fouts, who observed that "the alternative would have been Smart!"
 
ESPN Films’ 30 for 30 “This Was the XFL” to Premiere in February

Three days before Super Bowl LI, ESPN Films will premiere the 30 for 30 documentary “This Was the XFL,” directed by Charlie Ebersol, chronicling the short-lived, ill-fated pro football league. The documentary, airing on February 2 at 9 p.m. ET on ESPN, tells the story in fascinating, candid, and often rollicking fashion featuring fellow television legends and close friends – Dick Ebersol and Vince McMahon.

A bold challenge, a fearless experiment and ultimately, a spectacular failure. In 2001, sports entertainment titans Ebersol and McMahon launched the XFL. It was hardly the first time a league had tried to compete with the NFL, but the brash audacity of the bid, combined with the personalities and charisma of Ebersol and McMahon and the marketing behemoths of their respective companies — NBC and WWE — captured headlines and a sense of undeniable anticipation about what was to come.

Bringing together a cast of characters ranging from the boardrooms of General Electric to the practice fields of Las Vegas, “This Was the XFL” is the tale of — yes — all that went wrong, but also, how the XFL ended up influencing the way professional team sports are broadcast today. And at the center of it all – a decades long friendship between one of the most significant television executives in media history and the one-of-a-kind WWE impresario. This film will explore how Ebersol and McMahon brought the XFL to life, and why they had to let it go.
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http://espnmediazone.com/us/press-releases/2016/11/espn-films-30-30-xfl-premiere-february/
 
Will_H_69_9 said:
just to warn everyone, this documentary may end up being less harsh towards Vince McMahon and the WWE since ESPN now has a partnership with WWE where their talent will appear on SportsCenter and have a WWE section on ESPN's website.
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If ESPN in its press release is describing McMahon as a "one-of-a-kind WWE impresario," a man with "charisma" who owns a "marketing behemoth," I'm pretty sure not an unkind word will be said about him -- or Ebersol, for that matter, considering who the director is -- in this show. I'm sure it will be very entertaining, but if there's any hard-hitting investigative journalism to be done here, ESPN won't be the one doing it.
 
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